Qigong (qi gong, "the cultivation or skill of qi") is a Chinese practice of gathering, circulating, and refining qi, the vital energy, through the coordination of slow movement, breathing, and focused attention or visualization. It is an umbrella term for a vast and ancient family of practices, there are said to be thousands of distinct forms, ranging from gentle health-and-longevity exercises to meditative and spiritual disciplines and to the internal training that underlies the "internal" martial arts such as taiji (tai chi). Its roots lie deep in Chinese tradition, drawing on Daoist practices of "nourishing life" (yangsheng) and inner alchemy, on Buddhist meditation, and on the theory of qi and the meridians shared with traditional Chinese medicine, within which "medical qigong" is used as a therapeutic and preventive practice.
The historical practice was known by many older names; the general term qigong was popularized in twentieth-century China, and the practice underwent a huge popular revival in the late twentieth century. Presented fairly, qigong is a genuine traditional discipline valued for relaxation, gentle exercise, and meditative focus, and as a moving meditation it has documented benefits of the kind associated with any such practice; its traditional framework of qi and meridians is a feature of Chinese medical cosmology rather than of Western physiology, and claims of specific energetic or curative effects beyond those of gentle exercise and meditation are not established in those biomedical terms. As a living practice it remains widely performed for health, calm, and spiritual cultivation across China and around the world.